Genetic predictors of benefit from adjuvant interferon for melanoma: understanding variation in tumour/host interaction

个体对癌症和治疗的反应很可能与遗传基因变异和发生在肿瘤中的基因变化有关。干扰素治疗延长了黑色素瘤患者术后无复发的时间，但有许多副作用，目前我们无法预测谁会有反应或谁会产生副作用。基因改变可以用来帮助预测患者对干扰素的反应，我们的目标是识别这些改变。在利兹，我们将分析从患者身上取出的组织样本，作为干扰素临床试验的一部分。我们将从这些样本中提取遗传物质，并确定遗传基因和肿瘤基因的基因变化。使用已经为干扰素试验收集的数据，我们将识别预测干扰素的益处、干扰素的副作用和黑色素瘤存活率的基因改变。识别这些遗传因素将有助于确定哪些人将从干扰素中获得总体好处，帮助临床医生和患者做出关于治疗方案的知情选择，并将告诉我们更多关于人们的遗传特征如何与癌细胞相互作用的信息。

It is likely that an individual‘s response to cancer and to treatment is linked to inherited genetic variation and genetic changes that occur in their tumour. Interferon therapy extends time without recurrence of disease after surgery for melanoma patients but has many side effects and currently we cannot predict who will respond or who will develop side effects. Genetic alterations could be used to help predict a patients‘ response to interferon and we aim to identify these alterations. In Leeds, we are going to analyse tissue samples removed from patients treated as part of clinical trials with interferon. We will extract genetic material from these samples and identify genetic alterations in both inherited and tumour genes. Using the data that has already been collected for the interferon trials, we will identify genetic alterations that predict benefit from interferon, side effects from interferon and survival in melanoma. Identification of these genetic factors will help identify those who will obtain an overall benefit from interferon helping clinicians and patients make informed choices about treatment options, and will tell us more about how people‘s inherited characteristics interact with cancer cells.